The Homecoming of Samuel Lake (22 page)

“God’s kinda hard to explain,” Swan told him. “But don’t worry. You stay around my daddy long enough, you’ll find out everything there is to know about Him.”

Chapter 26

Toy woke up around four o’clock that afternoon, not because he’d gotten enough sleep but because Swan wasn’t stealthy enough when she stole his shoes from beside the bed. He opened his eyes to see her creeping out of the room on tiptoe. He would have asked her what she was up to, but he figured he’d be more likely to find out the truth if he waited to see what developed.

What Swan was up to was shining Uncle Toy’s shoes. She’d never shined a man’s shoes before, she’d never even shined her own. Her daddy was the shoeshine expert in the Lake family, so that’s who she went to for help. Samuel got out his shoeshine kit, explained the fine art, and then let Swan take over. A gift’s not a gift if someone besides the giver does all the work.

“These shoes,” Swan said to Blade, who was helping her by handing her whatever she needed, “are going to shine like new money. Hand me that brush.”

He handed her the brush. She brushed industriously, loosening up dirt, then puffed out her cheeks and blew the dirt off the leather.

“Uncle Toy is going to be so glad he stood in the way of you going out that window,” she told him. “What we’ve got to do is find plenty of ways to make him know that was the best move he ever made.”

Blade listened and nodded.

“For instance, flowers,” Swan mused aloud. “I think we should pick him some. You pick a flower for a person, it makes ’em feel special as the day is long.”

Blade nodded again, looking thoughtful.

Swan said, “And we can do him favors. You know. Get stuff for him, so he doesn’t have to get up. Things like that. Hand me that rag.”

She held out the brush, expecting Blade to take it out of her hand and slap the shoeshine rag in its place, but her assistant was no longer where he’d been the last time she looked.

Calla’s garden didn’t stand a chance. Blade had cut quite a swath through the dahlias and daylilies, and was halfway through the hydrangeas when a large and somewhat lumpy shadow fell across him. He looked up into the face of Calla Moses and then looked around for an avenue of escape. There didn’t seem to be one, not unless he wanted to go through the rugosa roses, which even he couldn’t do. He’d never heard the term
impenetrable hedge,
but he knew one when he saw it.

Calla was holding a bucket, and he halfway expected her to swing it at his head, but instead, she handed it to him. He took it automatically. It was heavier than he expected, because it was half full of water.

“If you’re looking for something to put those flowers in,” she said, “you can use this.” She gestured at the armful of flowers he was holding, and the other flowers that were strewn about on the ground. “I’ve been thinking about picking some to put on the side table in the living room. You must have read my mind.”

Actually, that was about as far away from the truth as a person could get and still be a Moses. The reason she was out here was because she’d seen what he was doing from the door of the store, and she’d almost had a heart attack. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, though. She had calmed down considerably while she was deciding not to dismember him, and by now, she looked pleasant as you please. Even the veins in her neck had stopped standing out.

Blade couldn’t say a word. Just two seconds ago, he’d thought it was doomsday, but here she was telling him he’d done something right. The world was getting stranger all the time.

“I was picking them for that man,” he said softly, nodding toward the house. “That
uncle.
”

Calla tipped back her head and sucked air in through her nose, the way a person does when a feeling gets to be too much to handle.
When was the last time anyone did anything special for Toy?
That’s the thought that took her breath away.
When was the last time anyone did something desperate and beautiful to please him?
She had no idea that Swan was also doing something special for Toy, or that Toy’s life was changing in ways he could never have anticipated. All she knew was that this little boy was doing a kindness for her own little boy—the man who had been her little boy—and her gratitude knew no bounds. She smiled at Blade Ballenger, and her mouth quivered a little when she did it.

After a second, she said, “Did you know flowers bloom better if you pick them?”

He shook his head solemnly.

“Well, they do. It’s like you gave them a compliment, and all of a sudden they start doing everything they can to get another one.”

“Do you know everything about flowers?” he asked. Which was precisely the right question to ask that particular woman at that particular moment.

“No, sir, I do not,” she told him briskly. “But I’ll lay odds you’re going to grow up knowing everything about how to get on a woman’s good side.”

When Toy came out of his bedroom, dressed for work, his shoes were outside the door, and (as Swan had predicted) they shone like new money. Lined up along the wall, there were awesome bouquets in a variety of containers—everything from Calla’s best vase to quart mason jars and several small jelly glasses. All dripping flowers. Toy cocked his head, and blinked his eyes, and wondered whether the person responsible was still alive, and whether his mama had hidden the body or called the sheriff and given herself up.

Bernice hadn’t made it back yet, so she wasn’t on hand for supper. Throughout the meal, Swan kept Toy’s iced tea glass full, and Blade passed him the butter every time Toy helped himself to another piece of corn bread. Everybody in the family kept looking at Toy and grinning, like they all knew a secret and were about to pop from trying to keep it.

Finally, Toy said, “I’d like to thank whoever took my clodhoppers this afternoon and brought me back a brand-new pair.”

“Those aren’t new clodhoppers!” Swan chortled. “They just look new because I shined ’em!”

He gave her an unbelieving look. “You don’t say. I could have sworn these shoes were spanking new. They even feel different.”

Swan laughed from her toes. Beside her, Blade was about to come out of his skin, wondering whether his gift would also be acknowledged.

Toy said, “And whoever brought me flowers had better come get a hug.”

He was looking at Swan expectantly when he said it, so he was surprised when Blade got down out of his chair and stole over beside him. The boy stood there, wordless and waiting, with the family looking on.

Toy stared at him. “You did that for me?”

Blade nodded shyly. Still waiting. Toy scooted his chair back a little, and took Blade into his lap, and hugged him good. Blade didn’t have the nerve to hug him back, but he was sure eating this up.

“I always wondered what it felt like to be a king,” Toy said, “and I reckon now I know.”

Calla Moses beamed. Just beamed.

Nothing lasts forever. A couple of hours later, the law descended on Never Closes in the form of Deputy Dutch Hollensworth, who had been sent by Sheriff Early Meeks, who had been visited (again) by Ras Ballenger, who was the picture of righteous indignation. By that time, Blade had done something none of the Lake children had ever even tried, much less accomplished. He had followed Toy into the bar after supper.

At first, Toy had ordered him out, telling him that kids weren’t allowed in there, but Blade had responded by darting around gathering up last night’s ashtrays and emptying them into the trash can behind the bar. The ashtrays did need emptying, so Toy let him finish that job, and before he could remember to remind him to leave, the kid had grabbed a broom and was sweeping up the floor. That was what he was doing when the regulars started arriving, and they thought it was the cutest thing ever, that little rascal with the bandage over one eye, working like a bee.

“That boy looks like a pirate,” Bootsie Phillips told Toy. “Only, he’s got the wrong color eye patch. A really good pirate needs a black eye patch.”

Toy didn’t say anything, but the other men said enough to make up for his silence. One of them told Blade he sure hoped he wouldn’t make them all walk the plank, and an old codger named Hoot Dyson asked him where he kept his parrot, and then Bootsie Phillips said, parrot, hell, he wanted to know where all the gold was buried. Blade was getting more attention than he’d ever gotten in his life, and it was the best feeling he’d ever had, so he swept faster and faster, and even added a little dance step of sorts to his routine. Before long, the men were dropping nickels on the floor and telling him that anything he swept up, he could keep. He had a pretty good jingle going in his pockets when Dutch Hollensworth arrived.

Toy’s heart sank. Maybe this had to happen, but he wished it didn’t have to happen so fast. And all at once, he wasn’t one bit sure he was going to let it happen at all. He motioned to Blade, trying to signal him to scoot out the back door, but Blade was too busy entertaining the regulars to see.

Dutch saw, though. He saw Toy, and he saw the boy, and he kept his eyes on that youngster as he made his way across the room. When he reached the bar, he leaned his big frame sideways against it, so that if Blade cut and ran, he could go after him. Toy pulled a beer from a tub of ice at his feet, uncapped it, and put it into Dutch’s hand. Dutch held the icy cold bottle up against the side of his face.

“I believe I’d like to take a bath in that tub of ice,” he said. And then: “Sheriff told me if I saw that boy yonder, I had to pick him up and take him home, much as we all hate it.”

Toy blinked at Dutch as if he didn’t know what in the world he was talking about. “What boy?”

“Ras Ballenger’s boy,” Dutch said, pointing at Blade. “That boy right there.”

Toy cut his eyes in the general direction of where Dutch was pointing and scratched his head, like he was trying to unravel a great mystery.

“Hey, fellas,” he called out to the room, “anybody here see a little boy?”

At that, Blade glanced over, and sized the situation up, and stood still as a stone.

The regulars understood immediately what Toy Moses wanted them to say. The idea fell over them like a revelation. They might not carry much clout in the world, but by damn, this was one time they could make a difference. One by one, they looked first at Blade, then at the deputy—and shook their heads regretfully.

“Maybe your eyes is goin’ bad, Dutch,” Bootsie Phillips said.

And Nate Ramsey put in, “You haven’t been doin’ any of them things my mama used to tell me I better not do ’cause they’d make me go blind, have you, Dutch?”

Somebody let out a snicker, and then everybody in the room cracked up at the same time. Dutch stood there watching them all carry on, and he knew there was no way he was going to walk out of there with the kid. In a situation like this, his badge wouldn’t mean a thing unless he used his gun, and he did not intend to draw his gun on his friends. Not over a thing like a little boy hiding from a man who had more than likely put his eye out with a bullwhip.

“Y’all
sure
you don’t see him?” Dutch asked the crowd. The question had a going-once-going-twice sound to it, kind of like, if there were no more bids, this auction was over.

They all shook their heads again.

Dutch drank down his beer, and belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, then,” he said, “I reckon I must’ve been seeing things.”

And that was the end of that. For the time being, anyway. The regulars cheered, and somebody went over and slapped Dutch on the back and told him he was a good man, and several people bought him beers, even though he protested. Blade Ballenger’s heart quit trying to jump through his throat, and the next time Toy motioned for him to get out of there, he slipped out the back door into the kitchen, quick as a lizard.

The other kids were sitting around the table, waiting for him, their eyes glued to the door.

“What was it like in there?” Bienville wanted to know as soon as Blade made it into the room. “Was it
tawdry
?”

Blade wasn’t sure what he was confirming, but he said, yeah, he guessed it was tawdry enough.

Noble said, “There’s a law car outside. Did that deputy see you?”

Blade plopped down into a chair beside Swan, and took the nickels out of his pocket, and stacked them on the table in front of him. There were eleven in all.

“He thought he did,” Blade answered, “but he changed his mind. Do y’all think I look like a pirate?”

When Ras Ballenger found out that his son was being harbored at the Moses place, and that the law and a good portion of the community were conspiring to keep him there, he was fit to be tied. He’d kill Toy Moses, that’s what he’d do. He’d walk in and shoot the S.O.B. right between the eyes.

“You’d get the chair,” his wife told him, after about the tenth time she heard him make the threat. She didn’t even duck when she said it.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he snarled.

She did have a point, though. You kill somebody in cold blood, especially in public, there’s generally a price to pay. When it comes to justifiable homicide, the law doesn’t necessarily see things from the point of view of the person who felt justified.

Ras spent every waking minute thinking about how to get back at Toy and the whole Moses clan. With everybody in creation knowing about the hard feelings between the two families, Ras would get the blame for anything that happened over there. If that house burned down, he’d be arrested for arson. If somebody fell off a ladder, he’d be accused of sawing through the rungs.

Finally, one morning, he hit upon a plan that was so beautiful, and so simple, that he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was sitting in the backyard, in a straight chair, when the thought came to him. Sitting there looking over his yard and his outbuildings and his maze of pens and feedlots, while Geraldine gave him a haircut. Up until that moment, he’d been a ball of nerves, all mad and twisted up inside, but once he knew what to do, he relaxed all over. It was the best feeling he’d had in a
while.

This plan wasn’t the kind of thing that could be carried out overnight, not if it was done right, and he’d be damned if he’d do it any other way. He’d have to be patient, and in the meantime, his high-and-mighty neighbors could stew in their own juices. Let ’em lie awake nights wondering why he hadn’t made another move to get his boy back, and what kind of hell would rain down when he did. Come to think of it, that helped make the waiting worthwhile—just knowing that there was no way those folks could be sleeping easy.